SAN MARCOS: South Korean teachers take a lesson from local school

More than two dozen educators from South Korea learned about the
American style of teaching at Alvin Dunn Elementary School in San
Marcos on Tuesday.

Officially, they were at the school as part of their
government's plan to teach everybody in the country to speak
English, although one of the educators, Minee Sun, said she also
learned some surprising cultural differences in styles.

"It's a familiar atmosphere," she said after seeing students
sitting on the floor near their teacher. "We don't do that in
Korea. Students are more strict."

Sun and 27 other Korean elementary school teachers, plus nine
high school teachers, arrived Jan. 13 to study at the Global
Leadership Institute, a graduate school for foreign professionals
at UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific
Studies.

Renate Kwon, program coordinator for the institute, said they
will stay until Feb. 9, learning strategies about teaching English
as a second language.

That's something teachers know about at Alvin Dunn, where
English is a second language for many students, Kwon said. The
institute knew about the school through UCSD teacher and Vista
resident Joanne Strantz, who taught English to adults at night
school at Alvin Dunn for 15 years.

Also of interest was the school's use of Guided Language
Acquisition Design, a teaching strategy that incorporates language
lessons into a variety of subjects rather than teaching just about
the language itself.

As explained in information provided by the San Marcos Unified
School District, the strategy is based on research that shows
students learn a new language most effectively when the emphasis is
on the meaning and the message.

"Today they get to see in classes how it's done," Kwon said
about the teachers' visit to Alvin Dunn.

Some of the visiting teachers are English teachers. Others teach
other subjects but are learning how to incorporate language lessons
into their teaching, Kwon said.

"The idea is to get away from rote education," she said,
referring to the method of repetitive drills that teach facts but
not comprehension.

Eun Joo Chang, who has been teaching in South Korea for 10
years, said her visit to Alvin Dunn helped her understand what she
has been learning at UCSD.

"We learn the teaching strategies through the books, but we want
to see the real situation at the school," she said. "I want to see
how they teach English, their specific skills, and I want to find
something to adapt to my students."

Kwon said Alvin Dunn is the only elementary school the South
Korean teachers will visit during their stay in San Diego. The nine
other South Korean teachers visited La Jolla High.

South Korea's Gyeonggi Province Office of Education first sent
teachers to San Diego last year, where they visited a National City
school, as part of a new initiative to teach English to everybody
in the country, beginning in elementary schools, Kwon said.

"We're hoping that as long as the Korean government is
continuing the program, they'll continue sending us students," Kwon
said about future visits from oversea teachers.